Good news for anxious people awaiting a response: it’s almost definitely not you

I promise you, it’s probably not anything you’ve done

We’ve all been there. Someone doesn’t reply to a work email. A friend leaves us on read. We get a funny look from a colleague in the kitchen. And the catastrophizing begins: you’re definitely being fired. That friend hates you. Everyone at work is gossiping about you. No matter how much you try to push the worrying down: it’s there, and you’re panicking.

The good news: unless you can pinpoint something you’ve definitely done very wrong, it’s almost definitely nothing to worry about. In fact, it probably isn’t even anything to do with you. Here’s why.

1. You are a background character in their own narrative

We are all the main character in our own stories. We’re worried about our husbands, or children, our parents, our friends. We worry about our diets and our income and our tax bill. We don’t spend hours pouring over what our assistant might think about our response to an email. We don’t spend our weekends gossiping wildly about a girl we haven’t added yet on facebook. We certainly don’t race to our laptops at 9am to respond to one. Chances are they are way more concerned with another problem or issue you can’t see. Even if it is a friend: they’ll…